"It prevents the viewer from contemplating the workings of the physical laws which keep the building standing up. Thus, a huge building can be made to seem rather weightless, like an otherworldly miracle hovering on earth."

The trick -- equally known to Baroque artists in Europe -- was not unique in Persia to the Safavids. But it is fair to say that they used it to lift structures to previously unknown heights.

In Isfahan, Shah Abbas heightened the effect still further by organizing some of his greatest buildings around a single city square – a square that with only a little imagination can itself be thought of as a grand Safavid carpet.

The original name of the square is Naqsh-i Jahan, or Design of the World. Measuring 165 meters by 500 meters, it is one of the largest city squares ever built.

That alone represented extraordinary city planning at a time when Abbas' contemporaries were Elizabeth of England and Suleiman the Magnificent and cities usually grew haphazardly by themselves beyond the royal palace.

But the square was extraordinary in other ways, too.

For one, it was truly a shared public space, used for everything from exclusive royal polo matches to popular carnivals. The shah's palace looked out over the square, with a broad verandah for viewing the events below.

The Imperial Palace occupied the entire west side of the enclosed and arcaded square. But it also shared the space with the two other great institutions of Safavid society, the mosque and the bazaar.

Just as weavers might do, the city planners placed all these institutions like motifs around the square's border.

Directly across from the palace is the mosque of Sheikh Lotfollah, the first new mosque to be built in the new capital. It was completed in 1618 as a private mosque for the members of the Shah's harem and so has no minarets.

The stunning ceiling of the mosque shows how much decorated tiles could lift a building's interior, as well as exterior, to seemingly boundless heights.

Here is a photo of the dome interior. The picture at the top of this article shows the details of the ceiling pattern.

The design of the ceiling, with its central sunburst medallion, is highly reminiscent of some contemporaneous carpet designs, showing the high degree of unity in Safavid art style across different media.

On the north and south ends of the square are two other great mosques and, on the north end, too, is the entrance to the Grand Bazaar.

Both the mosques are worth mentioning in their own right.

The mosque at the north end, the Imperial Mosque (now Imam Mosque), is an entirely Safavid construction completed in 1629.

The dome in the main prayer hall is 36 meters high, creating an echo chamber where scientists have measured up to 49 repetitions, only 12 of which are audible to the human ear.

Here is a view of the square from the Imam Mosque. The mosque itself is turned at an angle to the square so as to face Mecca.

At the south end is the Great Friday Mosque, which is much older. It was built when Isfahan was the capital of the Seljuk Empire (1038-1194) that stretched from Central Asia to Syria. It was partly redecorated in Safavid style to harmonize with the other buildings.

The Friday mosque is the largest mosque in Iran and has a central fountain that resembles the Kaaba in Mecca, so prospective pilgrims can practice their rituals before the Haj.

It is interesting to see how the square's designers found a way to visually integrate buildings as varied as mosques, bazaars, and palaces into a single great square.

They did so by highlighting something common to all of them: the iwan.

An iwan is a vaulted arch that has been used in Persian architecture since time immemorial. It was originally used for public buildings, including palaces, but under the Seljuks became part of mosques as well.

Here is a picture of an iwan, with the addition of two minarets, in the courtyard of Isfahan's Great Friday mosque.

It was the Seljuks who first placed iwans at the center of all four sides of a mosque's inner courtyard, creating a unique design that today architects call the 'four-iwan mosque'.

Eventually, the 'four-iwan mosque' design swept the eastern Islamic world, giving its mosques a look as distinctly their own as the Byzantine-based dome mosques of the Ottomans or the columned-hall (peristyle) mosques of the western Islamic world.

To tie together the varied buildings in their 'Design of the World,' the Safavids erected giant iwans as gateways in each of the square's four sides.

As Sexton notes, that made the entire square look like the courtyard of a four-iwan mosque, giving everything inside it -- including the centers of political and commercial power -- a sanctified feel.

That sense of a divinely ordained order increased the Shah's power and his subjects' loyalty the same way arguments that kings ruled by "divine right" increased monarchs' power in Europe.

The beauty of Isfahan staggered people of the time, including European ambassadors and traders who lived in the city.

Here is a portrait of one of Shah Abbas' successors, Shah Suleiman I, depicted with courtiers and visitors in Isfahan in 1670

Thomas Herbert, who was part of Britain's first embassy in Isfahan in 1627 famously remarked "I have thought of writing a book about it, but nobody at home in Yorkshire would ever believe..."

He went on to write a book anyway, 'Travels in Persia,' which was published in 1634 to great success.

The famous half-rhyme Esfahan nesf-é jahan (Isfahan is half the world) was coined by a visiting French poet, Renier.

Persian wags said later that he described Isfahan as only half the world because he had seen only half the city.

(In the panorama of the square at the top of this article, the mosque of Sheikh Lotfollah is on the left, Ali Qapu palace is on the right, and the Imperial – now Imam - mosque is at the back.)

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Heard in the Bazaar

"Although there is much war in the world today due to differing cultures and ideas, textiles are something that all peoples have in common. In places as diverse as Turkey and China, Europe and America, Egypt and the Caucasus, people have been weaving textiles, using similar techniques, for thousands of years. This is a common heritage for all peoples; we cannot characterize what we have here as only 'Turkish culture'; it's not, it's an international culture, handed down to us by our grandparents and their grandparents before them. Carpets are a meeting point for all peoples of the world."

"In trying to think and talk about carpets, I find myself constantly comparing them with music ... carpets made by the nomads and tribeswomen have the character of folk music ... the cottage-made carpet is like the performance of a solo entertainer with a repertoire of popular and traditional songs ... in contrast the workshop carpet, especially the court carpet, resembles a concerto."

"Oriental carpets have been recognized as prestigious furnishing in the West since the Middle Ages. In many ways, they represent the epitome of Western concern with alien things – especially utilitarian alien things. Carpets entered the Western cultural arena as a rare item of interest and eventually became a commodity. But commoditization does not adequately explain their continuing success in the market or the special attention they receive from collectors."

Brian Spooner, ‘Weavers and Dealers: the authenticity of an oriental carpet.' From the book 'The Social Life of Things,' 1988

Ali Majdfar/Throughout Iran

Refreshments

Tea & Spicy Flatbread:

Black tea goes wonderfully with flatbread that is lightly spiced with ground cumin, paprika, and tumeric. This recipe comes from the Mediterranean coast of North Africa:

Combine 1 cup whole-wheat flour with a pinch of salt, 2/3 Tablespoon of olive oil, and ½ cup water. Mix to form a dough and knead for 15 minutes. Coat the dough in 2/3 Tablespoon more olive oil, and let rise for 1 hour in a covered bowel.